Thursday, July 25, 2013

My professional background is Luxury hotel management for
many years, and have recently venture into Hotel Software consultancy… and with
that it means I’ve spent a lot of time in Hotels and Hotel rooms…

Having said that however, it was still nice to get invited
on a small trip to Phuket with my Buddy Huai Bin.

Himself and 2 other bloggers were invited to experience the
newly refurbished and re-launched Outrigger - Laguna Beach Resort in Phuket. And I was allowed to come along for the ride.

Having sort of Lived “out of Suitcase” for most of the previous
year whilst working and settling in Australia and Malaysia it was nice chance
to have a break and actually have space in my Hotel room….(I had in all honesty
already had a nice little 3 day break in Bali in December with a good friend,
but this wee trip to Phuket was free d-:
)

When invited to go on these trips you are kind of expected
to review the place you stay at as well, (when I was in Hotel management myself,
we used to have bloggers and Journo’s over frequently in the hope they would
score us favourably… and since I only worked in excellent hotels I can tell you
that Favourable reviews were always on the agenda.. ;-) ) Luckily I wasn’t asked to participate in
reviewing, I was just enjoying the stay … IT was up to my travel companions to
blog about our stay… and here and here are Huai Bin’s review…

At the same time, I did think I wouldn’t be a wrong thing to
put my thoughts on virtual paper so to say.. .

Initially I thought I had the perfect angle… “The Vision
challenged experience” see how things go when you sometimes have some sight
issues… how do hotels accommodate for that etc?… then I thought about it and laughed
out loud….

Why would I do that… ? So far, my entries have been about ,
getting on with it, not letting limitations get the best of you… so would
reviewing a hotel on how it handles the “less abled ones” be a thing to do in
my case? Nah… never….

And rest assured… the hotel didn’t limit me in anyway… all
was nice and even, and smooth, no potholes or level floor changes I could trip
over… the only thing that caused me grieve was some sand from the beach (when I
was on the beach) that blew into my eye and started irritating in between my
contacts and I had to take them out… wow… nothing to do with the hotel
anyways.. More with my own stupidity for not wearing shades (-:

So then what? Judge it on my professional experiences? Yeh,
why not? …well…. I got to a conclusion on that as well….. the NOT that is…. Its
work!!!!!! I’ve spent the bulk of my living/working hours since 1995 inside a
hotel in one way or another…. So when I’m at a nice relaxing resort… do I want
to start taking notes? Nah… not really… .. (or at least, not for now anyway)

I can tell you it was nice and relaxing though… that I had some
great food, one of the longest breakfasts I’ve had for a long long long time, (and
that says a lot for someone that doesn’t really do breakfast in the first
place) I can tell you that the Night
market in Phuket was amaaaaaaazing, and that I had a great Thai massage in a
rickety old Beach Bar from a lovely little lady that tortured me and my feet…. But
if you really want a review…. Read the ones Huai Bin did…

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

I was invited by my friend Haui Bin to join him on a visit to Phuket,
he is a very active blogger with a large following in Asia.

I had met him via Suanie from Suanie.net, who previously had been introducing
me to the Blogging culture here in Malaysia, she as well has a large following and
on these blogs they write about food and products, general aspects of their
daily going’s on etc… and as such they get invites to newly opened or
re-launched bars and or restaurants, product launches and more… this also
includes Hotels and Resorts on occasions and whereas I had joined Suanie on a
Restaurant re-launch tasting and event once, this time Huai Bin had a spare
space for someone to join on a trip to Phuket and I was the lucky one. (See my
next post on that specific trip itself….)

These couple of outings have been a bit of an eye-opener for me.

(yep, given that this blog is mostly about my eye –sight.. this is
a pun indeed… a bad one at that, but still…)

Blogging encapsulates soo much its an interesting thing to
observe.

So many people have different reasons and different approaches.

I have friends that blog to just get “things out of their system”

I have friends that use it to chronicle travels

I read blogs on “Lifehacks” TechieStuff” “Android Phones” and many
other stuff.. for either info or an opinion on a subject I guess..

I started writing my blog because I was initially frustrated about
not being able to find out much info about living and experiencing Keratoconus…
in the hope that by writing my frustrations and experiences down, I might be
able to make someone else’s situation easier to navigate…or alternatively for them to
use it as a tool to make others understand what it is we are going experiening, and that its not just a matter of getting a new prescription for your glasses…

(I know for instance that my circle of friends and family have approached
me with different responses from:

“Wow….. that made me cry” and
“Man, I never realised it was this bad” to compliments about my style of
telling my story.)

In all honesty, whilst hoping it might help others, I also have a
very selfish point here and that is….to get my frustrations “out of my system” as
well of course..

Then again, when I first signed up for this blog in 2005 it wasn’t
to do with any of my eye problems( i didn't have any then), it was a vain and failed attempt to write “HotelBabylon Style “about my experiences in the luxury hotel industry where at that
stage I had been working for about 10yrs.

It turned out that at that time in my life that definitely wasn't the
thing for me to write about, and although currently I can still come up with
plenty of stories, and maybe one day might just do so, at that stage I gave up
quickly and retired the blog so to say.

It wasn't until a friend of mine pointed out that maybe blogging
about my Keratoconus experiences wouldn’t be a bad thing I decided to see if
the bloglink actually still worked after all those years, and as we know,
nothing disappears on the internet, so here I was able to re-instated the blog
as such, gave it a bit of a face-lift, and started writing..

So far its been a good (and at times cathartic) experience, and
although I do have moments where I can’t think of what to write, and admittedly
do run out of things to write about KC wise,
then again, when there is something to tell, I always will…

That’s why my experiences with the bloggers I mentioned at the
beginning of this article, were so interesting…

For instance, initially I was kind of bemused by the taking of pictures
before eating a dish from many different angles to just make sure it looks good
on the blog, to taking photos of the whole hotel room and hotel and surrounding
area’s from different angles, once again, to make it look great for the blog…

And props to them for having made this a semi source of income, as
I saw for instance that during our trip to Phuket, it wasn't all just fun for Huai
Bin, it did involve quite a bit of time spent on updating his Blog and his
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare feeds…

So, although it might all look
like a Jolly.. these guys take it serious and are indeed providing a professional
service in way to inform us, the public, of whats out there…

As for all the picture taking that initially bemused me….I started
thinking….. its exactly what we do nowadays already when we go on a trip or
evening out… taking pictures of out meals, or the place we stay at anyway..

So maybe, when I don’t have anything interesting to say about my adventures
in Keratoconus land, I could write about other experiences… or maybe not…. Maybe
I should just give it a go and see what happens…in any case, given my vision, my pictures might end up a bit more blurry then theirs..

"Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy." – Rumi

Yeah, well...... although I’m pretty sure Rumi meant something very deep with this, I’m afraid for me it’s in fact, less metaphorical, and more physical….

In early 2012 I got diagnosed with Keratoconus, (often abbreviated to "KC") a degenerative eye disorder in which the normally “ping pong ball” shaped eyeball reshapes the front of the eye into a “rugby ball shape”, via corneal thinning.

This results in significant visual impairment like distortion, multiple images, streaking, ghosting and sensitivity to light and many other issues.

Unfortunately, It took a while to get this diagnosed and here I’m hoping to let you in on all the stuff leading up to finally finding out what’s wrong, and how my life changed because of it.. the good, the bad, and all the other stuff that life throws at you… with or without Keratoconus.

Why? well, I hit a stage where things went a bit dark, both visually and mentally and my Doctor advised me to write it "out of my system" , which I did, but then when things went better, I sort of left it at that.

Until, quite recently, I had a conversation with a friend (apparently a frequent blogger herself) about blogging, and after mulling it over I figured resurrecting an old blog space I had used many years ago, might not be a bad thing, as you never know who else is looking to find out about life with KC...

Whereas, when I got diagnosed, I found a lot of factual information, but not necessarily what living with KC is...

now, be ware that of course my story is only one of many, i experience things different then fellow KC-ers, sometimes more severe than others, sometimes less... This is me with KC.

*Please be aware that the timeline on this is going to be slightly out of whack on occasions, as i'm basically re-telling my situation from months ago, bringing it upto date step by step...